Quick trip with DragonFly Cherbourg to Rochfort

2 Places free for a 3 day trip Leaving Cherbourg at the france west-coast. The Dragonfly is already there to the next port of call Rochefort a bit more southerly also on the west-coast of France just above the Golf of Biscay.
Costs are travel and eating and drinking.

Planning is arriving on Friday 27th of August at Cherbourg mechanics are altering some of the electronics, 

Leaving Cherbourg at Saturday morning taking notice of tide currents. We have to cross one of the places with worlds most current Called the Alderney Race It is between the Guernsey islands and the mainland of France.

It is also famous of the magnificent views. When catching the tidal current can get us the very fast speeds.

Passing the the Islands will be very spectacular as well.  Famous because of there enormous range in high and low water which causes a view overland or over sea as far as you can see.

In weather changes the islands can be a port of call or give shelter.

Around the corner at Brest lot a of commercial traffic can be seen.

Passing Lorient which is a beautiful place to see Old submarine army base great restaurants.

This is a possible port of Call 

Passing some very nice islands in front of the French coast straight to the port of Rochefort.

TOTAL DISTANCE 

Total distance in straight lines approximately 400 Sea Miles 

Planning Overview:

• Arrive Cherbourg Friday 27th August shopping food and beverage
• Depart Cherbourg Saturdag 28th August.
• Sail to Rochefort Monday 30th August.

Keep in mind the weather may cause a delay.

If seas are rough we will run into a port for the night.

This could mean an arrival on Tuesday or Wednesday.

new plans: let's go to Barcelona

we have a new plan, plan is to start sailing in sept-oct to Barcelona.
We will do it in about 6 trips.
Goal is to stay ahead of bad weather.
Total distance: 760+470+830+600+820+700=+-4200 km

Would like to arrive march-april in Barcelona.

Each trip is between 400-800 km.
We can always decide to change the route and do more distance in 1 week.

Who is interested to participate?
Costs are transport & food (-:

Boat = Dragonfly, for longer trips I recommend to be with no more than 4.

The total trip.

all fotos dragonfly trip Denmark to BE

if you click on this slideshow you can see the picasaweb folder

thursday night & friday morning pics

Jan's invention: 3 sail setup, lets get the last knot

best we have done was 8 knots speed measured on GPS and wind was around 3 knots.

normal

discussing

status update friday noon

we are cruising since yesterday morning 5.00am, haven't been on shore.
Through the night there was not a lot of wind but we managed to do an avg of 7 knots.

Slept all ok, always dream a lot more when sailing.
The boat is ofcourse never quite but it was very piecefull.

The boat is not big but very doable even for longer trips where 4 people sleep, maximum is 6 but that I don't recommend for longer trips.

Is now 13.00h
Still 25miles to go to Ijmuiden. Wind dropped quite a lot and we have wind from the back now.
Jan & Rupert are playing with all kind of sail combinations.
Now they are trying out the spinnaker, more fotos later on.
Estimated arrival time 19.00-20.00h

Some first fotos.

4.00am in the morning

sunrise was quite nice

fotos Thursday lovely afternoon 20 may

status update thursday 20 May

Satelite internet doesn't work, damned.
So have to wait till when we are close enough to shore to send a post out.
Sending video's wont be possible today.

Thanks to Jan's trick we are still going quite well. Only 6.5knots now but there is almost no wind.
We will sail through the night trying to get to ijmuiden tomorrow in time to have a party with whatever dutch guy who wants to join us there (or belgium).

Looks like we will have to use the engine at a certain point in time, wind is dying on us.

This morning was exciting but not easy.
We left Tuxhaven with 25-28 knots of wind.
We had to motor for 3 hours against the wind trying to get out next to a very bussy shipping lane.
It was cold and way too early (5.00am).

Once out of the Elbe we got nice waves (3m) and good wind. The boat was doing great.
I was steering trying not to get sick. Jan took over around 10.00am and I went to bed for a couple of hours trying to sleep while the boat goes up and down 2m.
Got seasick again. Why the hell do I like boats, they allways make me sick.

Jan, Mario & Rupert were battling the wind we were still going a little upwind and had to tack.
We are tacking a full day know but its not completely against the wind, we just can't go parrallel with the cost so always have to tack to go back into the sea and loose it again.

I felt bad till 15.00h or so, wondering why I  like boats.
Jan has a smile on his face for the full day already and is constantly tweaking the sails, I think he recognises linux in it, needs as much work to keep it going.

In the afternoon between 15.00h & 19.00h we didn't make that much progress.
In the morning we had an average of maybe 12 knots in the afternoon I don't want to know.

Know we are doing well thanks to Jan's trick.

Right now Rupert is coocking again, we always get lovely english specialties, .... )-:
It's quite funny though we bought all our food in denmark and now we have to figure out how to cook it.
Most of the things we want to cook need ingredients which we don't have or don't understand.

Anyhow we drunk some whisky cola's to forget our misery (-: and everything looks bright again.

Our ETA for Ijmuiden is now 18.00h tomorrow, hopefully we make it, we will just keep on going through the night taking shifts.

Regards

Rupert, Mario, Jan, Kristof

impossible but true

wind was dropping to 4-5 knots
we didn't make any progress any more
jan had a brilliant idea, why not use 3 sails in stead of 2
hmmm, weird idea and definately not designed todo so

we tried it anyhow

we mounted the code0 sail behind the jib, very weird construction

now comes the weirdest part, it works

we are doing 7.5 knots in virtually no wind, our estimate 4-5 knots of wind maximum.

we know have 155 m2 sail on the boat.

some fotos to demonstrate the weird setup:

missing pilot on dragonfly

kristof in control (-; on dragonfly, or maybe ...

Trying to leave tuxhaven

team ready to start (Rupert takes foto)

we tried very hard to get into open sea was going really slow
there was about 20-25 knots of wind blowing straight at us
we waited for current to turn which it did but still then we only did 2-4 knots

You can see how slowly we pass a traffic scheme bouy



The autopilot is a fantastic piece of equipment, can drive the boat much better than a human can do.
Look at how it controls the rudder.

As read in previous post, the police caught us after 1.5 hours and we had to return to the marina.
The waves on the open sea are 3.5+ m.
Hoping that it will be better tomorrow.

police sends dragonfly back to marina

waves on sea 3.5+m
sideshore
which means side of trimaran goes 3.5 m up and down, surfing down the waves

was very hard to get to the sea anyhow because of serious wind

dragonfly front view (Elbe river Germany)

stuck in cuxhaven

Boat is prepared, we have water, food, petrol.
The current is against us we have to wait for the tides to turn.
We can leave around 17.00h.
Have to do 25 km's to reach full sea (we are at end of elbe now) and go out of the traffic zone.
We need to motor for that first piece because otherwise we have to tack in the traffic zone which is not ideal with all the big ships being here in that zone.
Going into the tide is not possible because than we have wind & tide against us, we would go backwards.
From 17.00h we can start.
We should be in middle of sea befor tide turns again us or we will have to return.
There is a lot of wind, going against it under engine will be hell.
Once we are on sea we can sail and we have wind halfway it should be lot better then.
We will sail through the night, wind should get less.
With some luck we enter Dutch territory somewhere this night.
It will be a bumpy ride during the night, not a lot of sleep will be possible I am afraid.
Hopefully tomorrow will be more calm.

coming in yesterday evening in marina Cuxhaven

was really tough
there was 5 knots of current and 20 knots of wind against the tide.
In those conditions Dragonfly speed in water is maybe 5-7 knots under engine.
The current was parallel with with the entrance of the harbour.
We had to drift her in, meaing go full steam against the current, wind in the back.
Wait for the right moment and full speed go into the harber, quickly put engine in reverse and break.
Was REALLY scarry but we made it with no damage.
It is like a plane landing with wind from wrong direction.

movie dragonfly on Elbe

boat in marina in cuxhaven (foto of boat expanded)

fotos last part of trip through canal